


Blue Lake and Rocky Shore

by ziparumpazoo



Category: Walt Longmire Mysteries - Craig Johnson
Genre: Boats, F/M, Spoilers, book canon, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-22
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 20:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3909742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziparumpazoo/pseuds/ziparumpazoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five boat trips Vic and Walt share. In no particular order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clear Creek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With thanks to [tree ](http://archiveofourown.org/users/tree/pseuds/tree%22) for helping me see.

_Clear Creek_

“You need to get this thing closer. I can’t-“  
Whatever else she was going to say was interrupted by the wave of freezing water and a string of language so heated I was sure it could have melted the rest of the ice clinging to the banks of Clear Creek.

I made a mental note to discuss said language with my newest deputy later, because at the moment it was taking all available effort to keep the inflatable raft from swinging wildly in the whitewater current and accidentally taking out our intended targets.

It was April, and while most of the snow was gone from Durant and the surrounding areas, spring melt was just getting under way in the Bighorns, swelling our usually lively creek with near-freezing runoff.

Vic shouted over her shoulder and the roar of the water crashing against the rocks. “I need another foot. Two would be fantastic.” With one hand gripping the strap and her leg thrown over the sidewall of the raft like she was riding a bronc, she stretched the other hand as far as she could reach to gain a few more inches in the direction of the pair of kids in the water.

I pushed off hard with the paddle, but the current kept shoving the rubber raft back into the churning water at the middle of the creek. I looked back over my shoulder to where Henry and The Ferg were throwing all their combined weight into the make-shift block-and-tackle. They had wrapped the dock line around a stand of willows to keep us from being swept downriver. Henry had also heard the request and he shook his head as he dug his boot heels deeper into the slick mud of the creek bank.

I looked back to the pair in the water. Two boys, not quite in their teens, but old enough to know better than to be messing around on the banks of the Clear at any time, let alone in the spring when the water ran fast and the rotting ice gave the illusion of being able to hold their weight. They’d already been in the water a while by the time the call had come in from a passerby who’d been alerted by a dog frantically barking at the river. The boys, dubbed Dumb and Dumber by Vic, were clinging to a rat’s nest of branches and debris piled up against some boulders in the middle of the channel. At any other time of the year they could have easily waded their way to safety, but right now their heavy winter clothes were weighing them down and the rushing water was battling them to exhaustion.

Judging by the deep blue of their lips, they weren’t going to be able to hold on if we didn’t get them out of the water soon.

I plunged my paddle in and forced a couple of hard strokes, trying to gain a little more distance by exploiting the geometry of the rope and the river bank. Above us on the opposite bank the dog barked and paced. I could see that Vic still wasn’t close enough to reach the boys, but there was nothing else we could do from this angle. We were going to have to head back to shore and approach from another direction. I updated Vic on the plan. “Not enough rope.”

She turned and stared at me for a moment with an expression on her face that read like maybe she should have reserved the nicknames for myself and The Bear for insisting we put the raft in so far upstream. The idea had been to ease our way down with the current to avoid bypassing the kids altogether.

“Fuck that, we don’t have that kind of time. These kids are fading.” She grabbed the dock line from the front of the raft and threaded it through the straps on her life vest, tying it off with a thick knot. It took me a full ten-count before I realized what she was doing. By the time I’d caught up, she’d already swung her other leg over the side of the raft and had dropped into the water. I shouted at Henry to give me all the rope he had while I tried to keep the raft from hitting Vic now too.

Contrary to the movies, hypothermia doesn’t kick in the moment somebody is submerged in cold water. It can take up to thirty minutes for the body to run through the stages before they even start to shiver. Vic was busy cursing her way through the first phase – the cold shock response, where the body suffers a reflexive gasp at the sudden shock to the system, causing the subject to hyperventilate. This is what normally leads to drowning in the majority of cold weather boating accidents. Being prepared for it, she’d kept her head above the water, and even though I couldn’t see most of her, I could hear that she hadn’t drowned.

The Dumb and Dumber, on the other hand, had been in the water a lot longer and the clock was running down on them. I jammed my paddle in deep and hit bottom. The blade sank into the silt and I leaned all my weight into it to hold it steady so the raft wouldn’t hit Vic in the water. She was making good headway, cutting across the current. I looked back over my shoulder to make sure Henry and the Ferg were still hanging in there.

When I looked back, she was gone. I shouted over my shoulder. “Vic went under!” I crawled my way forward to the front of the raft, aiming for the line tied to Vic’s life vest. I was just about to give it a good tug when a pair of boots kicked up over the front of the raft and made solid contact with my face. My hat was knocked off. I shook my head to clear the stars from my vision and found the rest of the kid attached to those boots being shoved into my arms.

“Pull him in. I need to go back for the other one.” I hauled him back to the middle of the raft to keep him from getting trampled and left him to shiver while I made my way forward again, ready to receive Dumber.

-  
Dumb, Dumber, plus canine companion had been packed off to the hospital with The Ferg, who had the unenviable task of contacting their parents and delivering the standard speech on spring melt and thin ice that we seemed to have to repeat on a yearly basis. It might be time to change up the sermon for all the good it seemed to be having.

Vic stood wrapped in a grey emergency blanket and watched Henry and I deflate the raft and load it into the back of the truck. The wind had picked up and she was shivering, but I’d given up trying to convince her to catch a ride to the hospital with Ferg and get herself checked out. She’d insisted she’d be fine once she got dry clothes. I’d tried to look stern and authoritative, not wanting to set a precedent with my newest deputy by letting her ignore my orders like everybody else in the department, but the truth was that I was impressed with her performance today and I told her so.

She tried to pass it off with a shrug. “All those summers of as a lifeguard weren’t just for the tan.”

I could see something else there on her face, something that looked a bit like relief, probably at not getting in trouble for her rash actions. I’d have to explain to her that the probationary period in the department was more so we didn’t get stuck making back pay for any new recruit that didn’t find the job up to their expectations. “We’re almost done packing up here. Call it a short day. I’ll drop you off at your place so you can get warm. Your husband will be happy to see you in one piece.”

“If he’s even home.” She pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. I looked up and wondered, not for the first time, if things were okay between her and the husband. She didn’t talk about him much, except for when they were fighting, and even then she just referred to him as the ‘asshole husband who’d dragged her out to the butt-end of nowhere’.

She interrupted my thoughts. “Sorry about the shiner. I didn’t think he’d kick.”

I reached up and touched the side of my face. It was numb from the wind and the colder water, but the skin around my eye felt inflated and tender. “Actually, I’m more upset about losing my hat.” I’d tried to catch a glimpse of it as we’d bounced downstream, but it must have either caught the current or sank.

“Yeah, about that.” She sidled close and pulled something out from under the emergency blanket and shoved it on top of my head. The band was snug and the brim would need reworking to get its shape back, but somehow in all the confusion, she’d managed to save it. I wondered if it was some sort of portent and found myself hoping my newest deputy would be sticking around, despite the husband’s penchant for job transfers that had landed her in my department in the first place.

She lay the back of her hand to the side of my face. “You should get some ice on that soon.” Her fingers were like ice themselves, and they felt like blessed relief on my swollen skin, something that didn’t last because she started shivering in earnest. 

“Just as soon as we get you home and out of those wet clothes.” This time the corner of her mouth kicked up and she gave me a sly look as I tried not to notice the gold flecks in her eyes and how they made them seem like they were sparking and dangerous.

“Why Sheriff, are you making a pass at me?” She turned and left me standing there with my mouth open and no defense as she retreated to the warmth of The Bullet.

It was the first time I realized that I was truly in trouble.


	2. Patch Reservoir, Muddy Creek Rd.

_Patch Reservoir, Muddy Creek Rd._

 

"Just so you know, this has got to be one of the stupidest ideas ever. We arrived in a perfectly good truck, but the skies open up and the first place you head to for cover is a boat?" Her voice was raised but I could barely hear it above the machine gun fire of hail spraying across the upturned hull of the aforementioned cover.

My answer was lost in the earsplitting crack of thunder that ripped across the sky above us. Hers, a split second behind when she startled and the back of her head made solid contact with one of the boat's bench seats, was not. I reached up and threaded my fingers through Vic's hair, probing for injury. She winced when I hit a tender spot and shimmied her way up my body until she was no longer aligned with the bench. The sand under my back was wet but there wasn't enough clearance to do more than lay there with Vic sprawled across me, a position which, under better circumstances, I was pretty fond of.

"A fucking aluminum fishing boat. A fucking beached aluminum fishing boat. In a thunderstorm. That's the best cover you could find? All fourteen feet of it?"

"Sixteen."

She propped herself up on her elbows and looked down at me. It was hard to ignore the heat of her skin radiating through the rain-soaked material of her duty shirt, and the pressure of her knee against the inside of my thigh. "Sixteen?"

"Yep."

"Because those two extra feet makes this plan of yours all the better?" A gust of wind found its way under the gunwale, the hail easing off momentarily. I felt a shiver run through her body and myself responding. The corner of her mouth curved upward into that lupine smile. Her knee moved against me as she leaned in closer to my ear. "You know, your truck has a working heater." Her breath was hot against my neck. "And blankets."

I considered making a run for the Bullet.

Then the world outside turned white and thunder rolled overhead. Wind gusted under the small boat and a surge of hail deafened me again. I decided risking the thousand yard dash to the truck might not be the smartest idea, not when I could wait out the storm here with Vic tucked comfortably against me.

Comfortable didn't last long. Vic rolled to the side and craned her head to get a better look at a spot up near the front of the boat's underside. Her duty belt caught on the pocket of my jeans and I felt her sidearm dig sharply into my gut. My voice came out a little strained. "At the risk of making an inappropriate comment about you being happy to see me…"

She shifted her weight onto her hip and her elbow and flapped a hand, dismissing my juvenile attempt at humor. "You got that HIN for the sixteen-footer from Dave Fielding handy?" She didn't wait for an answer and proceeded to pat down my shirt pockets until she found the scrap of paper with the hull identification number Ruby had collected when she'd taken Dave's statement about the boat that had gone missing from the sporting goods store's back lot.

"Found something?"

"Maybe." I saw her squint. I tilted my head to see where she was looking, but the shadows were deep and my angle bad. I reached down and pulled Vic's flashlight from her duty belt. I shone it above my head to where she was holding the piece of paper next to a small metal plate on the boat's inner hull. "Yep. Numbers match. It's Dave's." She grinned down at me. "Boat recovered. Case closed. He can file that insurance claim for hail damage instead." She adjusted her holster and wriggled until she was lying across me again, her head safely out of the way of the bench seat. I tried not to notice how good she smelled, the scent of dust, sweat, and summer rain mixing on her skin. "What's say we radio Ruby to give him a call on the way home and go get out of these wet clothes?"

I cocked an ear and listened for a moment, felt the rise and fall of her chest against mine as she waited for me, her eyebrow still arched in a question. I wondered when the hail had stopped and the rain had tapered off to something closer to light showers, and how I'd failed to notice.

"See, that's why you're going to make a great sheriff." The eyebrow reached impressively higher. "You're the one with all the smart ideas."


	3. West Tensleep Lake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> West Tensleep Lake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It turns out there is a particular order to this thing after all, so I've juggled things around. 'West Tensleep' and 'Lake De Smet' are both new chapters.
> 
> If you are still following this after all this time, thanks for hanging in there.

_West Tensleep Lake_

The July sun beat down against the back of my neck but I didn't bother to adjust my hat. It felt good, being warm like this. It was the height of tourist season here in the Bighorn Mountains, but being both a Wednesday, and only open to non-motorized watercraft, West Tensleep Lake was relatively quiet. I'd only seen a pair of kayaks heading up toward the mouth of the river earlier this morning, and had caught a glimpse of a canoe loaded with fishing gear as we'd slipped around the point.

“I signed up for the public relations seminar.” Her declaration caught me mid-cast and my hook fell well short of the honey hole I’d been teasing at all morning. 

“That’s at the end of July.”

Vic watched my line cut through the water as I reeled it back in. “Yup.”

Then it hit me. “Your mother’s coming out that week with Cady to make arrangements for the wedding.” A fact that I was sure to be in trouble with for forgetting until now. I made a mental note to check with Henry, my best friend and Cady’s wedding planner, about the list of things I was supposed to have accomplished before they arrived.

“Yup.”

Slipping the bail on my reel back and holding the line under my index finger, I drew the rod back and to the side but held the cast as I watched her take a pull from the can of Rainier she’d just liberated from the cooler at her feet. “You’re drinking my beer.”

“Yup.” She finally cut her eyes back toward me. 

“Am I always that annoying when I don’t want to talk about something?” She flashed a smile and I didn’t have to guess what her next words would be. “Don’t bother answering.” I let the cast go.

The yellow rubber jig landed a couple of feet past the rock shelf I’d been poking at. I reeled in slowly, then let the line rest, feeling the light current at the mouth of the river play the line. I’d felt a nibble or two earlier at this spot, so I let the rod rest lightly in my right hand. With my left, I reached toward the cooler. Vic, correctly interpreting the universal gesture for ‘pass me a beer?’, tossed one underhand in my direction. I caught it, but just barely. The slick can was well past the canoe’s gunwale when my finger tips fumbled it toward my chest.

She was smirking. “Nice catch.”

“You would have been going in after it. West Tensleep’s a protected wilderness area. There’s a steep fine for littering.”

“I don’t think it counts as littering when the can’s still full.”

I wiped the moisture off the can and braced in between my knees so I could pull the tab. “No, sending the beer overboard would be considered a different sort of crime.”

“Well I’m sure you’d find a way to punish me later.” She raised a suggestive eyebrow in my direction. I was distinctly aware of the way her voice carried across the still water, the afternoon air too still and just the wrong kind of stifling. It was probably a good thing the lake was quiet. Omar had been generous in his offer of the use of his cabin; I wasn’t sure I could face him once rumors got back to him regarding what his guest, the supposedly upstanding sheriff of Absaroka county, had been up to.

Even though she was dangling the bait, I didn’t bite. “Are you going to fish or not?”

Vic looked down at the rod propped against her lap. The hook was in the water, but she hadn’t touched it since she’d first cast. “This isn’t fishing?” Dressed in a bathing suit with an old flannel work shirt she’d taken from my duffle bag this morning tied in a knot at her waist, she’d turned in her seat so she was facing me in the stern. Her ankles were crossed and her bare feet were propped on one of the canoe’s thwarts. It figured that if there was something to prop her feet on, Vic would use it. She leaned back, exposing her face to the sun, and I took a moment to appreciate the elegant lines of her neck and the hint of tanned skin where her shoulders were exposed.

“Besides, I thought the whole point of this trip was to get away. You know, take a vacation before the wedding madness begins. Relax a bit, recharge your batteries… that sort of thing.” She lifted her head slightly, looking past me and beyond the shore. “Especially after recent adventures.”

I couldn’t see the mountain from where I’d anchored the canoe, but I could feel the weight of it’s presence as sure as I could feel the alpine sun on the back of my neck. Omar had offered up the use of one of his properties to, as he’d put it, “aid in my recovery” after my mountain adventures this past spring, and I could have chosen any one of a number of locations he owned. I wasn’t sure why I’d chosen here. Maybe it was like picking a scab to see see if the wound underneath was still raw. I was still feeling unsettled by what I’d seen up here and the possibility of catching a glimpse of Virgil was an attractive thought.

Maybe it was because I’d been entertaining a certain fantasy about bringing Vic up here and showing her there was more to our great state than scoria and sagebrush. She’d already seen it for herself when they’d pulled me off the mountain but I wasn’t sure she and the wilderness area had gotten off on the right foot.

Or maybe I was just hoping for a clean start. These mountains had been the backdrop for most of my life and I didn’t want my relationship with them soured with that kind of heavy baggage.

Speaking of baggage, I deftly steered the conversation back around. “Are you avoiding your mother on purpose?” From the feral look she shot my way, I wasn’t as deft as I thought. 

She reeled her line up and I worried I’d put an end to the afternoon with the question until she drew back and sent a cast nearly grazing my head. A warning shot. I heard the splash of the spoon hitting the water behind me. A breeze whipped up a skim of ripples over the lake as it brushed past us, and then the afternoon was quiet again. 

When she finally answered, she was looking past me at the mountains. “Cady doesn’t need the drama right now.”

The statement surprised me. They were two very different personalities, the women in my life. I knew Vic and Cady had spoken often since Cady’s engagement to Vic’s brother, even shared rides to the airport when their respective trips between here and Philadelphia lined up, but I hadn’t realized they’d become close. “I thought things were going okay with the planning at that end?”

She shrugged. “Sounds like it is. I just don’t want to rock the boat.” She flipped the tip of her rod a couple of times and I waited. Either she’d tell me, or she wouldn’t, and pressing her on a subject she didn't want to talk about never went very far.

When she finally spoke, it was with a sense of finality. “Look, the women in my family have long memories, okay? My mother didn't approve of my marriage in the first place, and being the good Catholic she is, approved less of the divorce. Apparently the solution to the dereliction of marital duties in her book is to fuck around on one’s husband, not divorce the son of a bitch. Weddings have enough drama of their own, so I’m going to the conference and avoiding the rest of the bullshit.” She started to reel her line in slowly, avoiding looking at me.

In all my years of law enforcement, I’d diffused a lot of situations just by making small talk, but this was one of the few times I’d been caught without a backup plan. I didn’t know what to say. While I was familiar with the broad strokes of the friction between Vic and her mother, I’d never been witness to the depths that it bothered her. 

It seemed the mountains had a tendency to expose us all. 

“Hey.” She was playing with her hook just below the surface of the water beside the canoe, so I waited for her to finally look up. I knew a strategic retreat when I saw one and I let her run a bit. “Come with me to the wedding?”

The corner of her mouth eased into the beginnings of that feral smile. “You worried I’m not coming back?”

“I’m always worried when you leave that you might not.”

Her attention turned back to the hook in the water. The lake was so clear, all you had to do was lean over to see the bottom. Vic played her line back and forth beside the canoe, watching the striped spoon flick back and forth as it cut through the water, imitating the movement of a bait fish.

But I’d felt the tug on my line. I’d blown this kind of thing with her before and considered my words carefully. “I could use a partner I know would have my back. Somebody who knows the territory.” I reeled slowly, hoping the hook was set. Over the top of her Oakleys, I could see her eyebrows pulling together. I amended the invitation. “And I would like it if you were there.”

“With you?”

“With me.” I stumbled over the next words; it had been so long since I’d last used them. “As my date.”

I watched the corners of her mouth pull back into a slow smile, the kind she wore whenever I tried to talk about this relationship thing between us. The one that said she knew where she wanted to go and she was waiting for me to catch up. 

“You know this whole situation is still so fucked up, right?” She flapped her hand back and forth between us, which I assumed had something to do with how her brother was to become my son-in-law, and my daughter would become a sister. Which technically made us relatives of a sort, by her calculation. 

“I promise that nobody will mistake you for the mother of the bride.”

She abandoned all pretense of fishing and stood up, the canoe rocking precariously as she walked a tightrope down the centerline toward me. I reeled in my line, figuring that even though I hadn’t caught any fish today, it looked like I wasn’t going home empty-handed. She leaned over me, hands on my shoulders, and kissed me hard and deep like she did when she was trying to make a point. 

I was only vaguely aware of how close the stern of the canoe was to being submerged by our combined weight when she pulled back and ran her tongue along her bottom lip.

“Well. That might be worth coming home for.”


	4. Penn's Landing, Philadelphia

_Penn's Landing, Philadelphia_

 

"Miss, the sign clearly reads 'Service Animals Only'." I had to give the skinny kid in the Riverlink Ferry windbreaker credit for standing his ground, if not for his sense of self-preservation, when he came out of the ticket booth and blocked the entrance gate to the dock.

"And I'm clearly telling you that he is a service animal."

Dog, probably wondering to which animal she was referring, looked over his shoulder at me for help.

He'd been quite content to lie on the floor beside the couch back at Cady and Michael's place, his massive head resting on his equally massive front paws and his hind legs twitching occasionally as he gave imaginary chase in his sleep. Occasionally his lip twitched and a quiet growl escaped, but he'd settled each time I'd drop my hand off the side of the couch and rubbed his ears, until I'd finally just left it there. My other hand stayed firmly planted on the diapered bottom of my granddaughter, asleep on my chest, to hold her close.

I'd been just about to drift off myself, the grey of the afternoon and the warm weight of new baby breathing against my neck lulling me into joining them, when I'd heard footsteps on the stairs, and her voice.

"So you think we should see about keeping him?" The footsteps stopped at the living room hardwoods and I cracked an eye open to see Vic absently watching the rain hitting the skylight, her mind focused a few thousand miles away on the other end of the phone conversation. "Yeah, I'll pass that on to the boss then. See what he thinks. Thanks Sancho." I heard the chirp of the cordless phone disconnecting and opened the other eye. The update I'd expected on our loaner deputy from Campbell County didn't come. Instead I found her still standing at the foot of the stairs, phone in hand, her lips slightly parted like she was about to say something. She was watching me with a soft expression, eyes focused somewhere far away and back home. It was one of those rare moments of silence with her and I was afraid of what might happen if I let it go on for too long.

"News from the west?"

Her eyes snapped back to mine and she set the phone back in its cradle on the end table. She shrugged. "Dog wants to go for a walk." She turned and reached for her coat hanging by the front door. Dog feigned oblivion until he heard his leash rattle. Like a shot, he was at her side, tail thumping solidly against the floor while she clipped the leash to the new collar Ruby had outfitted him with before we'd left.

I turned as the door closed to find Michael standing in the kitchen doorway with a receiving blanket draped over his shoulder. Even with the circles under his eyes from taking the third watch so he could be home during the day with Cady and the baby, I couldn't ignore the features he shared with his sister. Features I saw reflected in my granddaughter too, although they were somewhat offset by her mother's coloring. It might have been part of what had warmed me to him in the first place, long before I'd noticed his devotion to my daughter.

He held out his arms to take Lola, who was still asleep, from me. "I think she just stole your dog. Isn’t that some sort of crime in Wyoming?"

I tried to make a joke of it. "They write songs about it."

"Then you'd better get going. She's got a head start but I think you can take her. Call if you need backup." I might have been won over by the cop in him too. I nodded and grabbed my coat and hat on my way out the door.

I caught up with them as they turned on to Race Street, and headed east toward the Delaware. I hunched my shoulders against the wind as we made our way toward the waterfront, stopping occasionally so Dog could indulge his well-developed olfactory membranes in the cornucopia of city smells and leave his mark on each lamppost we passed. He was on vacation too, after all. We didn't say much, using the old cop trick of letting the other party break under the pressure of silence, but it didn't seem to be working in my favor this time. It was possible that Vic might just be better at the tactic than I was.

She didn't seem to mind the damp April weather, having grown up in the region, but by the time we hit Penn's Landing, all my various bodily insults from the last couple of years had started to ache. I turned my collar up and pulled my hat down to shield my ear. I was used to early spring on the high plains. Wyoming springs were cold, but it was a dry cold.

Crowds were light for a Friday, but tourist season hadn't really kicked off yet. I followed her along the walkway to the ticket booth and the ferry dock. I had no inclination to visit New Jersey, but I figured at least we could sit inside and get out of the rain.

"You can check his tags." I offered the kid and crossed my fingers that he wouldn't notice Dog was out of his jurisdiction by a couple thousand miles. Vic yanked Dog's collar around, dragging him forward by his thick neck and held up the tag with the five-pointed star Ruby had gotten engraved with 'Absaroka County Sheriff Department' so the kid could get a better look. The phone number had Cady's 215 area code because Ruby knew that the only time Dog ever wore a collar was when he was visiting, and if he got lost, Cady would know how to track me down. It was apparently enough for the kid because he handed Vic her change and waved us through.

"So what's in Camden?" The vibration of the big diesel engines cycling as the ferry pulled away from the dock spooked a normally unflappable Dog. He crow-hopped around our legs, tangling us together with his leash, before Vic unhooked him and reminded him that there wasn't anywhere to run off to. He finally settled, parking his rump on the toe of my boot and thrust his nose between the safety railing bars, inhaling and exhaling the rich harbor air in great puffs that blew his cheeks outwards like a bellows.

I looked down at him. "Happy now?"

He ignored me.

Beside him, Vic shrugged. The diesels leveled out and we headed for open water. She leaned against the port-side railing, propped on her elbows. She pointed across the water with her chin. "Not much. The Bear said he wanted a picture of the bridge. We ran out of time last time and he's putting together a collection or something for the Munchkin." The Munchkin being Vic's name for her new niece.

I looked out at the Ben Franklin Bridge spanning the river and remembered how it had played such a pivotal role in a case the last time we were both out here together. I wasn't sure it was something I particularly wanted a souvenir of, but Henry usually had his own reasons and I'd learned not to question them too deeply.

"As I recall, you snuck out early last time."

"Hey, the new guy needed to be supervised. Somebody had to maintain law and order in our little county."

"Somebody also wanted out of supper with her parents." I noticed we'd both carefully sidestepped mentioning Frymire's name, or our current lack of staff. I was going to owe Saizarbitoria big for covering while Vic and I were both here in Philly for Lola's christening. Or more accurately, I was going to owe his wife Marie for all those double shifts he was pulling.

Which brought me to the next point. "What did Sancho have to say about our loaner deputy?" I leaned against the rail next to her.

"He says he likes him and that he's pretty sharp." The ferry cut into a wave and Dog caught a faceful of spray. He sneezed and pulled his snout back in from the rail. "And if it means stealing one of Sandberg's deputies from under him, I'm all for that. We need warm bodies. Sancho's been great at taking some of the load in PJ, and that nephew of Ferg's is not bad, but the kid's still really green. But Walt, people need breaks. They've got lives too, families that need them. Kids. People need options sometimes; some way of balancing everything so it’s not just all about the job." She pulled a camera from her jacket pocket – the fancy compact unit that Henry had talked me into buying for the trip and which had more settings and options than I'd ever have use for, and snapped a picture of the bridge cutting a line across the horizon.

She was right. Law enforcement in a small town was a full-time job, whether you were on-duty, or not. A sheriff never has the option of looking the other way because it's Sunday afternoon and the game's on. The department had been running so thin the last couple of months that everybody had been putting their lives on hold, missing out on family dinners and important milestones. I couldn't ask them to keep doing it indefinitely.

Vic poked me. "Turn around." A young woman in a grey pea coat was holding the camera at arm's length now, pointing it toward us. "Smile." Vic ordered. "For posterity."

I slipped my arm around her shoulder and screwed my face into something that might have been a smile, meanwhile my insides were churning as I thought of all the things I'd been avoiding with those extra shifts. The camera chirped.

I spoke out of the side of my mouth. "Are you looking for options?"

There was a pause as she reached down to pull on Dog's ear, trying to direct his head so he was facing the woman with the camera. I thought she might have misunderstood the question until she leaned her forehead against my chest, buying herself a moment, and then I knew what this was all about.

"Shit Walt." Her voice was almost lost between the thrum of the big diesels and the wind through the space between us. "She would have been beautiful, you know?" I looked down at Vic and my arm tightened around her shoulders. She felt small for a moment. Then she looked up at me and I was lost in those sad tarnished eyes. I heard the electronic chirp of the camera again, but it was far away and inconsequential.

"I know."

She didn't have to say more. The first time I'd held the Munchkin, I'd been gut-kicked at the combination of both our family genetics exemplified. I knew that seeing me holding her this afternoon must have been a visceral reminder of what we'd almost had. I kissed her forehead because I could and because I wanted her to know that I understood, and then the moment was broken by the woman handing back the camera.

Vic thanked the woman and tucked the camera into my jacket's inside pocket to keep it out of the rain. The deck lurched and she grabbed the rail as the ferry rocked through another swell. Dog stumbled against my legs. The wind was picking up, lifting whitecaps across the water. We were closer to the Camden side now, and I had a feeling that this conversation had a time limit. Once we were back at Cady and Michael's it would be too easy to get caught up in everything else going on, all the comings and goings of family getting things ready for tomorrow's main event. We'd never really talked about what each of us wanted out of this relationship, but I knew the one thing I didn't want was Vic waking up one morning down the road full of regrets.

"I can always stay on for the rest of my term and you can run against me at election time. That’s one option." She turned sharply to look at me like I'd grown a second head, so I explained. "That's how Lucian handled it when it was time to hand over the reins. It'll give you a couple more years to decide what you want."

She gathered up Dog's leash and clipped it back on his collar. The engines shifted gears again as we slowed to approach the dock. "I already know what I want, Walt." She sounded impatient and I wondered if I'd missed the point somewhere along the way.

"Okay."

Dog started pulling the moment the engines cut out, dragging Vic along with him since he outweighed her by a lot.

I caught up with them on the dock. Vic was standing with her hands on her hips overseeing Dog, who was sicking up his breakfast onto the concrete pier. A flock of seagulls were circling overhead, jockeying for position at full volume. "So you can fucking eat my underwear out of the laundry pile last week no problem, but you can't handle a twenty minute boat ride?" Dog's head hung low in shame. "You know it's a long walk back, right?"

She spun on the approaching kid in the Riverlink windbreaker, this one a shorter, stouter version of the one on the Philly side, and he stood down. The gist of the conversation was clear, even if I only guessed at the words being drowned out by the gulls. I was oddly disappointed that she didn’t flip him off as he backed away. Then she lowered herself to a squat beside Dog and stroked his giant head while he licked his muzzle and cleaned his front paws.

I fumbled the camera out and snapped a picture of them for Henry's project. I don’t know much about photography, but I figured he was getting a wealth of material to work with today.

Vic looked up at me. I offered her a hand up. She pushed her damp hair out of her eyes with a thumb. I put my hat on her head to shield her from the rain and because I liked the way she looked when she wore it. I pulled her in close.

"So tell me what it is that you do want."

"I want to come home to you at night. Home.” She emphasized with a finger to my chest. “Not you sleeping at the jail by yourself because you think it's your duty and something might happen if you don’t. The rest…" Her voice dropped and she hesitated. "We can figure that part out as we go."

I figured I could work with that.


	5. Lake De Smet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lake De Smet

_Lake De Smet_

It was more like a barge than a boat, and I told my daughter so.

Cady dragged her Jackie Onassis sunglasses down her nose to stare at me. “Daddy, you know what a circus it would have been keeping Lola from going overboard in a fishing boat. She wouldn’t have lasted an hour, let alone a whole afternoon.”

I looked past where my daughter was lounging on one of bench seats to the front of the so-called boat where my granddaughter, sporting the bright pink life jacket she and Vic had picked out yesterday, was dangling her feet off the edge and into the water. Cady had a point; Lola was starting kindergarten in a couple of weeks, and if I’d thought Cady had been a going concern at that age, her daughter had her beat tenfold.

I was going to miss her.

We’d had Lola staying with us most of the summer, a tradition that had started with Cady as a child, spending summers at the ranch with her grandparents. It was always a welcome change of scenery for the ‘town kid’ she was the rest of the year. I’d always been amazed at how much she’d both grown and grown up when I didn’t see her everyday.

Cady had had the same shock when we’d picked her up at the airport the day before yesterday.

When Cady had first proposed continuing the Longmire summer vacation tradition, I wasn’t sure how it would go over with Vic. We’d never really formalized living arrangements; between the election and my semi-retirement, it hadn’t become a priority. She still had the little Craftsman on Kipling, but we’d fallen into the comfortable routine of her place when she was on late duty, and the cabin when she wasn’t. I’d discovered over the past few months what it was like to be on the other end of the wait after all the years of Martha being the one at home doing the waiting. I found it wasn’t as easy in practice as it was in theory. At least having the house in town meant it was easier to drop in at the station with dinner for Vic when she was working the late shift or had to stay overnight because they had a lodger. It also meant I worried about her less when I knew she didn’t have a long drive home at the end of the day. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself. I knew she could. I worried anyway. Maybe I was just getting strange in my old age.

But Lola had taken sleepovers at her auntie’s house in town in stride, dragging the bright purple North Face half-sized daypack Cady had outfitted her with for her summer adventure along everywhere we went. It was stuffed with her books and stuffed animals in case there was a chance of convincing me to let her stay in town. We’d kept busy and the summer had flown by.

I abdicated the captain’s chair with a comment to Dog to keep a weather eye on the horizon for pirates. He opened one eye long enough to roll over on his side and thump his great tail twice against the deck. Some first mate he was turning out to be. I stepped over him and made my way the length of the barge, grabbing a pair of cans from the cooler next to Henry before easing myself around the safety gate and on to the two feet or so of deck that protruded out over the front of the pontoons. The boat dipped and Lola shrieked in mock terror as my two hundred and ten pounds shifted the boat’s center of balance but did not tip it over. I had to admit that Cady was right. If one had to spend the day out on the water, this was the way to do it. 

I reached over Lola’s head and offered Vic one of the cans. “So. Monday?”

Vic nodded, pulling the tab and taking a sip. “Monday. In the morning. Omar said any time before ten.”

I leaned back against the guardrail and watched her. She had on her favorite pair of Oakleys and a thousand yard stare, looking out across the water at something I couldn’t see. “Looking forward to having a new partner?” With Lola as a distraction, it was a question we’d managed to avoid most of the summer. My formal retirement from the department was going to be a big change, both at work, and at home, but after serving the county for all but a small fraction of my adult life, I felt it was time. The county was in good hands.

I waited. Between us, Lola dangled her toes over the edge of the deck and splashed water on my feet when she thought I wasn’t looking. We were talking in code and it annoyed her not to be the center of the conversation.

Vic sipped from her can. “It’s going to be a lot of work. All the training, you know?” There was a lack of enthusiasm in her voice.

“You’re up for the challenge.” Taking a cue from Lola, she flicked water in my direction, her usually perfectly painted toes a riot of blue and pink sparkle nail polish. 

She caught me staring and tilted her head at Lola. “You should see the pedicure she gave Uncle Bear.” Then she turned the conversation back to the original subject. “Anyhow, you had it easy.”

“I had it lucky. My partner came already trained.”

“Like I said.” Lola, deciding she’d had enough of being ignored in favor of work conversation, scrambled her way over me and headed aft to her mother and the cooler of drinks. Vic glanced over her shoulder, watching until she was sure Lola was being fussed over by Cady. “You had it easy.”

I conceded. “Good breeding stock.”

Vic snorted. “Unknown breeding stock, is more like it.” She flicked water at me again and then leaned back on her elbows, face toward the sun like some rare and exotic flower. “It must have really burned Omar’s ass when he realized it was Dog who knocked up his prize winning Rhodesian Ridgeback.”

“I think that’s why he’s insisting we take one of the litter.” I liked the idea that Vic’s new partner had a pedigree that originated with an ancestor bred to corner lions. In the event of a jailbreak at the Great Plains Zoo in Sioux Falls, we’d be ready.

There was a commotion behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw Henry whisper something into Lola’s ear that set her tearing towards us, short legs pistoning as fast as they would go. There was a heavy thump and Dog was on his feet chasing after her. Vic, sensing the danger before I did, rolled out of the way. I missed the cue and ended up victim to not one, but two tidal waves when Lola cannonballed off the end of the barge with Dog following. His huge fan of a tail whipped me across the face on his way past. I was still wiping water out of my eyes when I heard a third, less boisterous splash. I managed to clear my vision in time to see a pair of toned calves slipping below the surface of the lake. Vic resurfaced a moment later beside Lola, spitting water in my direction like a fountain. 

Dog circled them twice, working on his front crawl, but I could see he was tiring, so I called him over and convinced him Vic and Lola weren’t in any danger of drowning. It took both hands, one wrapped in the scruff of his neck, the other around his barrel chest, to haul him back on board. I gave him a shove through the safety gate and closed it behind him, just in time to avoid the fallout when he shook his heavy coat out. Cady and Henry weren’t so lucky. I figured it was fair since Henry had incited the whole riot in the first place.

My attention was drawn back to the water when a cool hand touched my bare foot. Vic was efficiently treading water in front of the boat. “Dropped something?” She raised my hat and shook the water out. Since it was summer, I’d switched out the beaver felt, and the palm leaf took the soaking well. It looked even better when she placed it on top of her head. 

She turned and took a couple of strokes back to where Lola was still bobbing along in her life jacket, then shot me a smile over her shoulder that looked something like a dare. I raised my drink can in salute and a promise that I would take her up on it later. 

Big changes were coming. In a few weeks, Lola would be starting school and I wouldn’t see her nearly as often as I’d like to. Vic would be the full time sheriff, and as much as I’d like to pretend it wouldn’t, I knew from experience that the job would have an impact, even with all her training and experience. I leaned back and enjoyed the feel of the late afternoon sun on the back of my neck and tried to fix the moment in memory, all the people who mattered to me most in the world, all right here together.


End file.
